


Salvation

by ninzz



Series: Dragon Age Ficlets [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Healing, Injury, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:17:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninzz/pseuds/ninzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt on tumblr: 'stomach kiss with f!hawke and varric.' Can also be called 'Or, The Day Varric Realised He Loved Marian Hawke.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salvation

Varric’s ears stung as he heard Marian Hawke scream. It wasn’t an intimidating cry, it was one of pure agony and terror. It was followed by a snarl and a distinctly draconian hiss, which cut off into a watery gurgle. The intensity of her cry sent crows flying from their perches, the sound of their wings echoing the fluttering of the dwarf’s mind as he tried to process what was happening.

 

The forest fell into deathly silence as the birds disappeared. Varric’s mind fell silent too, as fear gripped his throat and his chest tightened. He looked at Anders for a moment before he rushed to where the noise came from, uncomprehending of anything else.

 

What he saw knocked the breath from his lungs.

 

Marian Hawke was lying in the settling dust, breathing raggedly. As he drew closer, he saw that a dragonling had managed to sink its claws into her and had torn her open from breast to belly, but not before she had slit its throat. Blood stained the dirt around them a deep red as the creature rasped out its last breaths, her sword still embedded in its nubile throat. Varric practically fell to his knees beside his friend, hands flying over her body frantically, trying to figure out what to deal with first.

 

"Hawke. You… I… I have to- or-" Varric couldn’t finish the sentence. His eyes searched hers, asking permission.

 

Hawke met his gaze for a moment and nodded stiffly, then coughed, blood dribbling out of her mouth, down past her ears.

 

"Make it quick," she gritted out, before coughing more violently than before.

 

The dwarf set about exposing the injuries as quickly as possible, removing her armour with surprising deftness and throwing it aside. Were she not delirious with pain, Hawke might have wondered if Varric had thought about taking off her armour a bit too often.

 

The wounds themselves were awful; Hawke’s leathers had stuck to them in the heat already and Varric winced on her behalf as he peeled them off as gently as he could. Now that she was divested of the leather and metal, he saw three deep gashes that extended from her clavicle to her right hipbone, and continued along her thigh. Maker, she was even burned in some places.

 

Anders came into Varric’s field of vision, then, and said: “I need to heal her now, Varric. She won’t make it if I don’t.”

 

Varric nodded and shuffled aside so that the mage could work. Anders knelt, and took a moment to examine the wounds more closely. He found a claw embedded in the deepest one of them.

 

He stroked her matted hair back from her brow and murmured, “I’m sorry, Marian,” before he hooked two fingers into the wound to get the foreign body out.

 

She immediately arched her back and screamed, trying to get away from the pain.

 

"I’m so sorry," he said again, holding her as still as possible with his other hand.

 

He then withdrew a clean cloth from his pack, and poured alcohol over it. He gingerly touched the cloth to a wound, then applied more pressure in order to clean the grit and dust from it. Hawke groaned brokenly, hands grasping at the earth. She found Anders’s forearm and held tightly enough that she would have drawn blood, had his arms been bare.

 

With the claw gone and the wounds clean, he placed both palms on her belly and closed his eyes. His hands soon shimmered with healing energy, and Varric watched with wonder as muscle, flesh, and fat knitted together before his eyes. He could soon see that Anders was focusing on healing from the bottom of the wounds upwards, to prevent scarring or infection. As they started to close, Marian sighed as if awakening from a dream and turned her head away from them. However, a quick glance at Anders said that he couldn’t sustain it for long enough to heal her completely. Varric glanced at the pouch with the thread and needles.

 

After a time, Anders practically collapsed, only just managing to catch himself as he fell to the side. He took deep breaths, concentrating on not falling unconscious from the exertion. He dragged his clean hand over his mouth and saw that his nose was bleeding.

 

Marian was not yet completely healed, so Varric took over from there. Before he knew it, the needle was already pushing through her skin, as if his actions were outside his own awareness. As the first stitch pulled Marian’s skin together, he was reminded of Leandra. Whether it was her face with thread pulling the edges of her skin taut and the corners of her smiling eyes into a horrific mask, or her love of embroidery, he was unsure. The difference, he reminded himself briefly, was that this was an act of friendship and not borne of some gruesome fetish.

 

Hawke had fallen unconscious before Varric could finish. Her breathing was steady for a time, but after about an hour, it began to slow down. Anders and Varric knelt on either side of their friend, waiting with bated breath for one of two things; her eyes to flutter open, or remain closed forever.

 

At around sunset, Hawke’s chest expanded with a sudden breath, and Varric flew to her side, hands gripping her shoulders and caressing her bloodied face. The Maker could strike him dead at this moment and he wouldn’t care, if it meant her eyes would open and he could see their impossibly blue depths once more.

 

And open they did. Anders stirred at the sound of Hawke’s breathing, and came to kneel beside her head, thumb stroking her brow, as she looked back and forth between the mage and the dwarf, eyes redder than the blood covering her. Varric nearly cried with relief, breathing out all in a rush. He hadn’t even realised he had been holding it. He pressed his forehead to her stomach, broad hands bracketing her ribcage. Before he could stop himself, affectionate endearments were tumbling out of his mouth and between them, he was pressing kisses to Hawke’s soft, if scarred, flesh. One of Hawke’s hands came down and carded through his hair reassuringly.

 

"Thought we were going to lose you, Marian," he said, tears pricking his eyes. "Don’t scare me like that."

 

Anders smiled down at her fondly. “Your eyes look like pissholes in the snow.”

 

Marian let her head roll back to rest on the ground.

 

"Let’s _not_ do this again,” she said, almost inaudibly. Varric turned his head, and he decided that her heartbeat was the best sound in the world as her belly - and his head - rose and fell with each breath.

 


End file.
